This article is concerned with developing a philosophical approach to a number of significant changes to academic publishing, and specifically the global journal knowledge system wrought by a range of new digital technologies that herald the third age of the journal as an electronic, interactive and mixed-media form of scientific communication. The paper emerges from an Editors' Collective, a small New Zealand-based organisation comprised of editors and reviewers of academic journals mostly in the fields of education and philosophy. The paper is the result of a collective writing process.

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Towards a philosophy of academic publishing

In the magazine environment, graphic designers, publishers and editors are charged with the complex responsibility of ensuring that the cover of their specific magazine cannot be dismissed. Although there may be a few hard and fast rules that make for a great magazine cover, because magazines differ extensively according to their readership, what works for one will not work for the other.

Judging a book by its cover

There are many positive aspects of teaching and learning in Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs), for both instructors and students. However, there is also a considerable amount of negativity in MOOCs, emerging from learners on discussion forums and through peer assessment, from disciplinary colleagues and from public discourse around MOOCs. Through mixed-methods case-study research of two diverse MOOCs (one focused on general, introductory-level content and one designed for specialized graduate students and professionals), we consider the following questions: What are the various forms that negativity takes in MOOCs? How might MOOC negativity vary among disciplines? How does negativity impact MOOC instructors and learners? We present evidence suggesting that MOOC negativity poses a serious problem that may be responsible for instructor/ learner disengagement and instructor burnout, and that anticipating and addressing such negativity can improve MOOC learning communities. Lessons learned from these two MOOCs can be beneficial not only to those involved with MOOCs, but also to those involved in other online educational contexts where faculty and learners seek to manage existing and anticipated negativity.

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Negativity in Massive Online Open Courses: Impacts on Learning and Teaching and How Instructional Teams May Be Able to Address It.

Anything relating to digitalization is certainly in vogue these days, and academic research is in fast pursuit. Currently, much of the research in this area is explanatory or conceptual, and not empirical, and exists in case studies that are spread across different disciplines (for example, strategy, management, innovation, and informatics). An initial search on Google Scholar reveals an overwhelming amount of suggested articles for search terms, such as: \"digitalization\" with 58,100 links, \"digital disruption\" with 5,570 links, or \"digital transformation\" with 25,500 links. In addition to this abundance of published research, much attention is now on digital technology developments driven by technology vendors. Reports describe new types of digital technologies such as: Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), or blockchain, to mention a few. A number of reports, for instance by consultancy firms, also give speculative estimates of the numbers of workers that will be affected by these technologies. In short, the accelerating emergent field of research that addresses “digitalization” and related topics is complex, unstructured and hyped. Consequently, both research and practice lack a rigorous foundation of prior published research to underpin and direct future exploration into the new digital technologies. A prerequisite condition to obtain a clearer picture of the contemporary phenomenon of digitalization is to achieve an overview of it, that goes beyond the current hype. There is a need to extend prior research that attempted to provide conceptual clarifications (e.g. Nambisan et al, 2017; Yoo et al., 2012; Yoo et al., 2010) and a uniform definition and taxonomy of the multiple and interrelated terms used in current digitalization research. The ambition of this paper is therefore to address the following research question: How can the concept of digitalization be framed into a rigorous conceptual foundation that can support research and practice alike?

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Beyond the Hype: A Bibliometric Analysis Deconstructing Research on Digitalization

Abstract Digitalization is both a major cause of the challenges now faced by several media industries and a source of their potential solutions. Within the book and newspaper industries, the value of the physical product is about to be surpassed by that of digitally delivered content, disrupting the distribution system that these industries have relied on for many decades. In particular, digital distribution has radically changed the way in which consumers engage in unpaid and paid media consumption. Anchored in the notion of disruptive innovation, and more specifically related to the idea of distribution as disruptive technology, our study investigates Generation Z’s unpaid and paid consumption of digital books and online local newspapers. Drawing on two Norwegian audience surveys, we find that both industries involve at least one disruptive actor. Generation Z relies heavily on Facebook as a distribution channel for news. Pay-walls have a negative effect on the usage of paid online local news, despite the belief that paywalled news is better than free news. In the Norwegian book industry, paper books still have a very strong position among Generation Z. Audiobooks have greater usage than e-books, and we conclude that the real disruptive actor in the Norwegian book industry is the streaming of audiobooks by actors such as Storytel.

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Digital payments for a digital generation: Disruptive technology in book and local newspaper industries

Digital technologies such as e-books are predicted to have a profound effect on publishing, but they are yet to have a serious impact on the industry. This paper considers the implications of digitization and digital publishing for the trade book publishing industry in South Africa. Through surveys and interviews with South African trade publishers, a picture was developed of the current state of digital publishing. This state is evaluated using the context and predictive value of disruptive technology theory. In this case, digital technology is seen as a disruptive technology in the traditional print publishing environment. As the paper shows, the problems that publishers are experiencing are characteristic of industries faced with disruptive technology. The principles of disruptive technology can therefore be applied to develop recommendations and suggest strategies for publishers planning to venture into digital publishing. Although the focus of the research was on South African trade publishers, the r...

Susan Gaigher

Papers

The Predictive Value of Disruptive Technology Theory for Digital Publishing in the Traditional Publishing Environment: A South African Case Study